Consistency Is Boring

Why professionalism is overrated and to-do lists are for Tories

Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash

I received my first ever creative commission when I was eleven years old. I was keen on drawing cartoons at the time. I copied characters out of the Beano, Roy Of The Rovers and Marvel comics, trying to perfect a bunch of different styles. I had dreams of becoming a professional illustrator when I grew up.

My brother had a girlfriend who worked as a care assistant in a home for kids with disabilities. She said she’d pay me twenty quid to make some flashcards featuring famous Disney characters such as Mickey, Donald, Goofy and all the rest. It was for some sort of educational game.

I was excited about the prospect of getting paid to draw. But I kept putting it off and putting it off until the deadline day arrived and she was on her way round to collect the finished work. In a panic, I grabbed some pieces of typing paper and a ball point pen and attempted to draw Mickey Mouse from memory. It was shit. Tried Donald and it was even worse. I decided my only option was to trace the images but the only Disney pictures I had were on some old novelty pants.

So there I was, twenty minutes before the client showed up, sat at the kitchen table, trying to trace pictures of Mickey Mouse off a pair of pants onto a piece of A4 typing paper. What a shambles.

When my brother’s girlfriend arrived, I handed her the work shamefully but still had the balls to ask if I’d get paid.

At this point my brother intervened with a long, humiliating lecture about my slipshod attitude. I’d had weeks to get this sorted, he pointed out. I should have sourced some images of the characters, practised sketching them and then got hold of some proper materials with which to make the cards.

I had been lazy, disorganised and shit. He insisted that his girlfriend didn’t give me a penny.

He was absolutely right. His lecture was so powerful and accurate that it has lived with me ever since.

While my mates were topping up their pocket money by delivering newspapers in the cold and dark, I had been given the chance to earn some dough out of doing something fun that I would have otherwise done for free. And I had wasted the opportunity. I had fucked it up. I was a worthless piece of entitled shit.

He didn’t actually say those last bits. I added them in myself and still do so to this day, whenever I feel as if I have failed to produce something to the standard I deem acceptable.

The shitshow of my first ever commission still haunts me. My brother has probably forgotten about it by now. I’m sure his ex-girlfriend has too (yes, they split up a few months later and I have always wondered if my professional incompetence might have played some part in that).

Beating yourself up over a lack of productivity is common to us all. I think my brother taught me some important lessons back then that have served me well over the years. But I also think I have dwelled on them too much at times. Professionalism is important, I guess. But the need to be constantly producing, delivering, improving and perfecting is dangerous and addictive. It’s one thing resolving to do the work you’ve promised to do on time and to a decent standard. It’s another thing to start hating yourself every afternoon when you realise that only four items on your overly ambitious 30 item to-do list have been crossed off.

Life just can’t be about constant progress. We are, all of us, participants in a constantly oscillating game of one step forwards, two steps back. Consistency is an overvalued concept. It means doing things the same way every day in the hope that we will slowly achieve improved results. Which sounds fucking boring, doesn’t it?

Life goes up, life goes down. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. Some days, you might wake up full of beans, go for a run, smash out a load of work, hit all your deadlines and be home in time to knock up a delicious meal for your family. Other days you just feel inexplicably nauseous and knackered, get fuck all done, order the kids pizza for tea and fall asleep in front of Question Time consumed by a sense of self hatred.

A lot of men have become too enchanted with applying the stratagems and protocols of elite athletes to their everyday lives. But not all of us are elite athletes. Most of us are just dreary corporate slaves. We are not all built with the same inclinations as those exceptional sportsmen who are able to achieve constant improvement every single day of their lives. They are referred to as ‘elite’ for a reason. It is not healthy for average folk to apply the same standard to themselves. You will be left with a constant sense of failure. You don’t have to end every day by checking off everything on your to do list. You don’t even need a fucking to-do list. To-do lists are for Tories.

You don’t need to be in a state of perpetual progress to be happy. You can be perfectly content just sometimes sitting still, doing nothing and letting the bullshit of your mind swirl around a bit. Feel sad, learn to live with it, understand it will pass and tomorrow might be more fun.

Life is not a race; it’s much more nuanced than that. And more enjoyable too. Races are a pain in the arse.

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Some services, links and phone numbers to help you through the tough times

https://www.samaritans.org/ Tel 116 123

https://www.thecalmzone.net

@YoungMindsUK 0800 018 2138

@CharitySane 0300 304 7000

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

https://cocaineanonymous.org.uk/

https://andysmanclub.co.uk/

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/gambling-addiction/